


At Sea

by epersonae



Series: the only life you could save [25]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Family, Forgiveness, Found Family, Kid knows what's up, M/M, Or not, Post-Canon, Sort Of, Stone of Farspeech conversations, Teenage Mookie, They talk about Lucretia, Trauma Recovery, Trying to talk on a boat, post-Reckoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 15:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18479077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Mookie calls out his dad. Merle calls Davenport. Dangers are glossed over, and forgiveness is not offered. Davenport agrees to a visit.





	At Sea

**Author's Note:**

> The usual preface: this is part of the long postscripts to The Reckoning Arrives, although this one stands a bit more on its own than some. (If you're jumping in, the one important thing to know for this fic is that in this series, Angus is Lucretia and Magnus's kid.)

Merle slides the stone of farspeech along the countertop, passing it from one hand to the other, can’t yet decide if he was ready, and even if so, not sure what he’d say, really. He makes a frustrated noise, just as the kitchen door swings open.

“Hey pops,” said Mookie. “Tryin’ to get up the nerve to call Dad’n’port?” He walks past Merle to get a drink of water.

“None of yer damn business,” Merle replies, as usual more churlishly than he meant to, but Mookie just shrugs.

“Yeah, probably not.” He drinks his water, the silence hanging between them.

“It’s just, ya know, he wanted to know I was safe, so I probably oughta…”

“Sure.” Mookie sets the glass in the sink; Merle can’t manage the nerve to hassle him to wash it and put it away. In the morning, maybe.

“Just don’t wanna get him riled up….”

“About Aunt Lucy, yeah, I know.”

Merle blows out an irritable sigh.

“Well, tell him I said hi, anyway.”

He watches Mookie walk out of the kitchen and down the dark hallway, hears him tromp up the stairs. House is quiet, almost too quiet, he thinks as he continues to restlessly fumble with his stone of farspeech. Maybe he can just leave a message, Dav doesn’t always pick up, and as he’s thinking that his footsteps take him out the same direction, but out the door and onto the veranda instead.

He clears his throat, mentally preparing for the message, something breezy, they’re all fine, it went real great. Nothing about Lucretia, nothing about all the shit that went wrong.

Instead, that familiar voice answers, serious and steady: “Hi Merle.”

“Hey Dav, how’s it hanging?” He chuckles like it’s a good joke but can’t keep the heartiness like he usually does.

“Good seas, enough wind but not too much, starting to pick up a little right now,” says Davenport. “Not why you’re calling, though. I take it you….” He pauses, and Merle can hear him swallow, instead of saying  _ boys _ , before picking back up as if the pause had never happened. “Successful mission, then?”

“Oh yeah, yup, very good mission, everything went right as rain, totally to plan, killing was just smooth as butter.” And honestly, the killing part  _ did _ go pretty well, didn’t it? “Felt good to tell that fuck where he could stick it, after what he did to Maggie. Got to do that spell where I summon up a divine and then  _ whoosh _ take out some henchmen, and then Luce—”

He stops, abruptly, and he can hear the wind in the sails in the silence.

“Anyway, yeah, went great, just thought you’d wanna know.”

Davenport hums, and Merle doesn’t know if he wishes he hadn’t called, or if he could be there in person to read Davenport’s expression, put an arm around his shoulders,  _ something. _ He sighs.

“Not as simple as it looked?” asks Davenport.

“Kind of a near thing,” he admits. “Taako and — they got captured, which  _ that  _ sucked, and me and Carey, you know, the lady dragonborn, Maggie’s friend—”

Davenport breaks into his ramble: “You can say her name, Merle, it’s not gonna piss me off, I know she was there.”

“Well, okay, sure, just don’t want it to be weird is all.”

That soft chuckle he loves, a little bit rueful now, almost drowned out by the cry of a seabird. “I’ve lived with weird for a long time. Still keep coming back to you, don’t I?”

That does get a real laugh out of him. “Alright alright. Real funny. Everybody’s gotta pick on ol’ Merle, even his sweetie?” He pauses, looking out at the starlit grounds. “You’re still coming to family vacation, yeah?” Another noncommittal hum from Davenport. “You don’t hafta talk to her or nothin’, we can do the same thing as always, I just want to see ya, alright?”

“I miss you too, Merle, I just don’t know why it always has to be with...everyone else.”

They haven’t had this conversation in years now; when Davenport’s made his mind up to something, there’s no moving him. And Pan knows he’s got the right to be mad, more than the rest of them, honestly. But it’s in his head now, the way she looked when they broke her out of Kalen’s dungeon, and he doesn’t like it. She was better after a night sleep, and whatever it was she and Taako talked about, and a little yoga, but still.

“You know she and Taako been talking again? Dunno what all’s up with that, but they — they’re gettin’ better, looks like.”

Davenport lets out a loud breath through his nose.

“Merle.”

“Alright alright, you know I ain’t one to push, I’m just saying—”

Davenport cuts him off with a voice quavering with emotion. “D-d-d-do you even know, Merle? Do — do you — you have any idea? I don’t want— I don’t even like to— I — I —” He takes a shuddering breath. “I’m glad you can, but I — I can’t. I don’t talk about because I don’t…. I don’t want to be a burden, Merle. I don’t want anyone to think they have to take care of me.”

“It’s not a burden,” Merle says softly. He can imagine Davenport pacing on the deck, see the hot color in his cheeks, the flair in his nostrils that means he’s using every bit of self-control to stop from crying. “I want to be there for ya, Dav.”

“Then stop fucking pushing, Merle!” The words sound like they’re forced through the arcane connection, and Merle takes a step back on the porch to absorb them. 

An owl hoots somewhere out in the dark woods, and on the other side of the connection, another seabird seems to answer.

“I’m sorry for shouting at you, Merle,” he says in a voice so steady and even that Merle knows he’s working for every bit of it, “but why do you think I went to sea?”

They’d tried living together, before the earldom, before he decided to start Extreme Teen Adventures, in those first days after the end of the world. And Davenport had been kind and tender, they’d played a lot of cards, but he would jump at the smallest things. Dav was great with the kids, they thought the world of him, but whenever they stayed over there was something haunted in Davenport’s eyes. They’d argued about Lucretia — well, he’d pleaded, Davenport had shouted, his words breaking apart into fragments — and then they hadn’t. 

Then the opportunities had come: a ship for his captain, and a home for himself, and they’d taken their opportunities, and he’d never asked why. The matter of the boat had come up around the same time Lord Sterling had turned up, which he figured was maybe a sign, not a Pan kind of sign, but maybe an Istus kind of sign. So Davenport had gone one way, he’d gone the other; they’re both long-lived folks, they’d work it out eventually.

“Figured you missed being cap’n after all those years on the ‘Blaster, and then, you know, I had the kids, figured you didn’t want us all up in your business….”

Davenport’s long sigh is like the wind in the sails.

“Oh Merle. You know I love Mavis and Mookie….” He clears his throat. “Never said this before, but, ah,” and he clears his throat again, which is unusual in Merle’s many years of experience. “I’m sorry I was so quick to suggest leaving them.”

“Well fuck, Dav.” He sits on the porch swing, one hand on the armrest. Weird to think how many years he didn’t have anything like this, instead the close quarters of the Starblaster, then Hecuba’s house which was never his home, and here, finally, he’s put down roots he didn’t think he’d ever have. “Never really blamed you for thinking like that, guess when you… woke up? It was still just like we were doing like we always did.”

Davenport hums. Finally he says, “Something like that. But I saw everybody working it out, and I couldn’t.” He takes several deep breaths. “I’m not surprised she and Taako are talking again.”

That startles a laugh out of Merle. “Drew, you old so and so! You know something like that, you gotta tell a fella.”

Davenport chuckles, and again Merle wishes he were there to see it. 

Merle continued, “You know, I always  _ hoped _ they would, but I wasn’t really figuring on it. Not after I gave it a couple of tries, and you know Maggie, Lup, I think even Dangus gave it a shot and nada.”

“He treated me like I wasn’t a joke,” says Davenport, so softly that Merle almost doesn’t hear.

“Who’s that?”

“Angus.”

“Kid’s not always terrible.”

“Merle, you really should lay off him.”

Merle shakes his head. He knows it’s a pretty terrible instinct, and yet he can’t help himself. “Yeah yeah, I know, everybody loves the world’s greatest smartass.”

“When he, he was there, and kind, and there was something— I couldn’t piece it together, not then. If I think really hard, and— and— and I try not to that often, I can almost remember what she was like. Acting— I don’t know — calm, I guess, but I knew it meant something to her, without — without —”

Merle finds himself holding his breath. He’s only ever talked about that time when he’s been angry, when it’s the ledger of Lucretia’s sins. 

“I didn’t know how I knew, I couldn’t find— Merle, I didn’t have — there weren’t any  _ words,  _ not, not that soon after. I knew she’d had— ”

Merle tries to imagine Davenport then: not his beloved captain, nor the blank but cheerful “ward” he’d seen at the Bureau, but what he might have been like immediately after. He aches for both of them, Davenport and Lucretia, together but alienated and separated from the ones who loved them.

Davenport takes another deep breath; Merle can hear him striding the deck again; he’s gonna wear a hole in the boards. “So when— All that with Angus, I knew I had to go, and I knew, I knew, I saw—”

“What?”

“I saw— Taak-Taako with, on the, together, up there— Magic lessons….” He trails off. More rough breathing.

“Nice to see Taako give a shit about somebody again.” Merle’s jape doesn’t draw the laugh he hopes for, and he winces in the dark. “Sorry.”

“Took that kid under his wing, since he still  _ had  _ enough of his mind to give to someone else. Which means they bonded, which means— Merle, they’re all  _ connected,  _ and I, I, I can’t.” With the breath he takes, the clearing of his throat, Merle can see him straighten his posture. After a long pause, Davenport’s tone is sharp and businesslike. “The boy’s like a son to Taako, so he’s going to work things out with his mother. Had to happen eventually. I have no such…” Another throat clearing. “I don’t have that connection.”

To his surprise, Merle finds himself seething as he hears Davenport shut down — again, again and again. It’s easy to be light with his family, most days: let ‘em work it out among themselves, or not, he’s got to have some faith in them to do their thing. And yet. Maybe he’s just tired, but the words spill out of him like water overflowing a dam.

“So that’s how it is, huh? Be the captain of your ship, stay away from everything, and then maybe...what, Davenport? Gonna come home two or three times a year, and not that I don’t love any time I see ya, but still. That’s all there is...until she dies? ‘Til…” He swallows hard. “‘Til her  _ kid  _ dies? An’ what if you get eaten by a kraken or killed by ghost pirates? That’s it for us this time, and you know it.” He hears Davenport pacing on the other end, somewhere between seething and snapping. “Was gonna say you can’t avoid it forever, but then I know how stubborn you are, like her, and that’s—”

“Merle.” His name is in a warning tone, but Merle’s doesn’t heed it.

“No, Davvie, that’s it exactly. Same amount of  _ I’m gonna do this my way and to hell with anyone else and to hell with talking  _ and jesus fantasy christ if that ain’t what got us all in this mess I don’t know what the hell is.”

“A thousand times I’ve wished I’d noticed something, said something, and then all I can think is,  _ she didn’t say anything to us either.  _ And I’ve tried, I’ve sent gifts and cards, I’ve tried to be cordial, and what is there to say, Merle? I look— I look at—  _ Lucretia,  _ like my daughter, Merle, our daughter, and what would you do if Mavis turned you into some kind of simpleton?”

Merle takes a sharp breath.

“I’d wanna know, Dav, and I’d wanna hold her, and if she apologized, well….”

“I guess that’s the difference between us, isn’t it?”

“If you can’t talk to her, and I swear to you I won’t ask again, will you at least talk to me? Tell me what happened?”

Davenport’s pacing stops abruptly.

“What?” he asks.

“I never pushed you on it before, but now I guess I see you’ve got a lot held in.” Davenport’s laugh is sharp in response, but Merle keeps his tone even. “Let it go too long in the name of keeping the peace, maybe.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Merle.”

“Of course you don’t. Doesn’t mean you don’t need to.”

Another laugh, this one low and fond. “Been saving that for a special occasion?”

“Just for you.”

“I miss you,” says Davenport.

“Miss you too, Davvie. We’ll talk when you get in?”

Davenport sighs as he says, “I’ll bring some good coffee, and…. I’ll try, Merle.”

“All I ever ask.” In the distance, Merle can hear Orla shouting as waves crash against Davenport’s ship. “Sounds like you better go.”

Another wave, even louder. “Yes, sorry — be there soon.” Davenport’s last words are clipped and rushed, and then the connection drops before Merle can say goodbye. He puts the silent stone into his pocket and leans against the railing. The sea here at Bottlenose Cove is calm, just a soft breeze kicking up a few little frothy waves. Somewhere, wherever Davenport is right now, the seas are wild and stormy.

Merle remembers, then, looking off of the deck of the Starblaster, watching a storm swallow an entire chain of islands. Davenport beside him, his face tight, eyes unfathomably hollow. He’d reached for Davenport’s hand, then, but the gnome had turned away from the window. In retrospect, he supposes Lucretia had been watching, that it had been part of her calculus, deciding without speaking.

A long chain of decisions, going all the way back to wherever the Light of Creation came from, wherever John came from (and wherever he went to, and Merle takes a moment to remember another beach), the world where he was born and first worshipped Pan, all the worlds between, the death, the destruction, the years apart, and now here. A dark quiet house and the anticipation of family — all of his family — and the hope that time and patience will heal their wounds. “See ya soon,” Merle murmurs into the quiet night.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge shoutout to @TheFamousFireLadyM for inspiration on this fic. I've sort of stayed away from Davenport as a character for a whole bunch of reasons, but I've been pondering a follow-up to the brief conversation in reckoning, and recent discussions really got me going. ([A Treatise on the Lifespan of a Dwarf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17495762) is the _good shit_ , both Johnchurch and Davenchurch, and recent chapters have had some fascinating exploration of Davenport's experiences and motivations.)


End file.
